Contents

Research Interests

Inverse metabolic engineering involves generating a library of mutant strains and screening through these mutants to identify which genes are responsible for a particular phenotype. Since the size of a genetic library can be large, using a high throughput screening method is important. In the area of metabolic engineering, one typically screens for the concentration of the metabolite of interest secreted into the cell culture media. Commonly used tools to measure metabolite concentrations, such as HPLC, are slow. A measurement which could be used for high throughput screening is an enzyme electrode. In this technology, an enzyme is immobilized on the surface of an electrode. When the enzyme reacts with its specific substrate, electrons are transferred from the substrate to a cofactor associated with the enzyme which then generates a current through the electrode. I plan to develop a high throughput screening method using enzyme electrodes to screen a library of mutants for amino acid overproduction.